Feathers
by North of the North
Summary: In the dark of the night, anything is possible. The dark may conceal things, hungry beings who might want to eat you. As a young angel, Mathew was told this. Now, on his own, hurt and lost, he may just become prey unless he receives help.
1. Chapter 1

**Feathers**

 **Chpt 1….15 July 18**

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If you could touch the sky, would you yearn for it as much?

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Silvery flakes drifted down, glittering in the bright light of the Harvest Moon. The blackbird swooped down from its nest, and was engulfed by a shadow-The Shadow- under the trees. A few of the bird's feathers escaped to float to the ground and a voice rumbled out from the darkness, malevolent and creeping, "Such a shame. I lost some. Such a waste...oh well...I can always find some more. How many birds will I have to eat tonight? I'm always so hungry...maybe I'll find a nest of babies again. The crunch, the crunch between my teeth is satisfying...or perhaps I'll be in luck. Maybe I'll find an angel...oh yes, an angel would be so tasty to eat right now…"

The creature's mutterings were lost to the underbrush as it slithered, oozed, and seemed to jump from shadow to shadow away to its cave to await the feeling of more wings coming near. More food for him to eat to bursting and never feel full from. Ever.

"So hungry..."

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 _In the dark of the night, anything is possible._

 _The dark may conceal things, hungry beings who might want to eat you._

 _No one had told that to the bird who was flying back to her nest with food for her chicks though. It was done in an instant, and she was gone, snatched up by a shadow of darkness with only drifting down feathers to tell the story of where she had met her end before they are lost in the underbrush. The feathers remain on the forest floor for a few days after that until a gust of wind snatches them away and the only testament to the bird's prior existence is gone. Her chicks left alone and defenceless._

 _This being is called the Grabber. The Grabber is a dark beast. A being that will capture, and sometimes kill birds, with its favourite dish being angels, to obtain a single feather from them. Once a bird's feather has been taken from them, because it only targets magical birds of which this world has a few species, it will eventually lose the ability to fly. Angels that are permanently unable to fly die from misery and despair within a few years so that even those of its victims survive a feather being torn out, which causes excruciating pain, die._

 _Again and again, it stalks through the night feeling its hunger never diminish as its shadow tentacles reach outward again and again in search of food to shovel into its cavernous maw._

 _And... if a young angel strays from their flock or wanders out at night, he will come to get you!_

Mathew's grandmother finished her story, tackling her grandson to the ground along with his twin brother and tickling them both as they laughed in her arms.

Within just a too short decade though, this would soon become her most treasured memory. A time of innocence before her little Mathew was lost and no one could find him and uneasy whispers talked of the Grabber and how he would be back again for the rest of the children soon.

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 **North of the North**


	2. Chapter 2

**Feathers chpt 2, 01 March 2020**

I knew I wasn't supposed to be out flying. I knew every time I went out flying alone past the Boundary. Knowing that, despite my "goody two shoeness" that my brother Alfred believes controls me, well, it never stops me from doing this, my one flaw, my need to fly in the magic storms that surge just on the outside of the Boundary. Maybe it's that my connection to nature has never felt more alive in my life than when it is storming out here, but there I was out in the dark night as it pelted rain and hail and the sky flashed with lightning and I had never felt so alive.

My mind briefly brought up old fairy tales, it's hard to forget them, especially when you are where the monsters in those fairytales are said to prey on their victims the most, and a slight prickle of unease went down my spine as I thought of The Grabber, the biggest and most frightening monster of them all, but my magic keeping the weather from touching me as I hung in the air in the midst of the tumult also bore my reactionary feeling of "whatever" and my curling honey-blond hair lifted in the air briefly before going back down. Like a shrug of its own, despite being inanimate.

Maybe I should have listened to that feeling of unease.

That was when my purple eyes caught sight of a bit of movement, down near the ground, and unconsciously I flew a little bit lower and closer to see whatever it was. I was already flying low to begin with, the ground was just a quick dive away. As a protector of life as a winged air fey, or angel, as we are more commonly known to the human animals of the planet, if it was an animal fleeing for safety who had accidentally wandered into the magical and now stormy area that divided the magical human reality realm from the fully fey realm, then I'd need to help them. It's in the blood of the light fey to help anyone in need. Especially if they were in more serious danger, like if my magic warned me, as it was now, that a lightning bolt would strike near them. I was in no danger from any lightning, even if it hit, I'd just absorb the pure magic of the lightning that strikes in the Boundary, but any unfortunate animal who had wandered over here would not fare that same lucky fate.

But the movement hadn't been an animal, or at least it hadn't been one that Mathew would have suspected with his magic touching all living beings around him to let him know what was around. Something he couldn't sense struck out then, and snatched him from the air. Something he couldn't see despite feeling it hit him.

Mathew felt several bones in both of his wings crack, and he fell the 50 metres down to earth with something wrapped around his waist that he couldn't see beyond a darkening trapping his arms to his sides. Though as an angel is so connected to their wings as an active spell keeping them moving, his attention was torn by the agonizing pain their breakage left him in and could barely focus on the approaching ground even as he cast a new spell to keep him up.

It failed, and though it had slowed him down, he still hit the ground hard, leaving his attention to wobble and his wings to vanish back under his skin still broken as his vision darkened even as he saw a figure approach him.

Even in the midst of the storm that normally gave him energy, the multiple spells he had active to help with his fall, and what had been keeping him upright, and now the magic crawling under his skin to start healing the wings he'd brought inside his body in their ghost-like state was too much for his still-growing magic ability to handle, and though he couldn't tell anything about the figure besides that they just seemed like a human-shaped shadow, bigger than any human animal he'd seen before, he couldn't keep his attention, and he fell unconscious just as the figure reached out hands that become more human-looking as they left the cloaking shadow of the rest of the figure.

Mathew had never actually touched down on the mixed magical and nonmagical human-dwelling plane of earth before, but now he had, the first angel in over a millennia to do so…directly in the pathway of The Grabber.

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